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concealment sends in an AP report about an uproar in India over citizens arrested for their Facebook remarks. Quoting:
"As India's financial capital shut down for the weekend funeral of a powerful politician linked to waves of mob violence, a woman posted on Facebook that the closures in Mumbai were 'due to fear, not due to respect.' A friend of hers hit the 'like' button. For that, both women were arrested. Analysts and the media are slamming the Maharashtra state government for what they said was a flagrant misuse of the law and an attempt to curb freedom of expression. The arrests were seen as a move by police to prevent any outbreak of violence by supporters of Bal Thackeray, a powerful Hindu fundamentalist politician who died Saturday."

...that help keep online interactions civilized! (Surely there's no need for anonymous speech in my society. And of course, if you've got nothing to hide... oops, maybe we do have some things to hide because they are a bunch of NUTS out there.)

Lots of groups and countries are pushing for laws against the defamation of religion and blasphemy.

But when you lose the right to say "well, see, I don't believe in your god, and I see no evidence for it" -- then society has been taken over my the most vocal (and in some cases violent) people.

But, in some places, if I said "show me the evidence that Jesus was at least a historical person, let alone the son of god"... or "Why should I believe that Mohammed was the prophet of god"... there would be angry mobs ready to burn and stone me because I hurt their feelings. And in many countries, the police would be there to help them.

We will be seeing more attempts by people to enshrine in law respect for their imaginary friend.

Hey dumb dumb the arrest had nothing to do with Religion. Such bigotry on this site.

It did, actually, although somewhat tangentially. The leader she was indirectly speaking out against was a leader of a fundamentalist religious movement with a long history of violence that is trying to expel foreigners and non-Hindu ideologies (they call themselves "Shiva's Army", if that tells you anything about their stance).

If you practice it, you are being told what to think and what to believe. And if religious power is also the power of government, you've ALWAYS got a real problem on your hands *even* in cases where you are a practicing member of the established ruling religion.

On top of that, religion seeks to be the presumed origin of morality and that without religion, there would be no morality. This is demonstrably false, but as with nearly everything else associated with religion, they have no problems with spreading lies about their faith.

People don't need religion. They need to respect each other and to defend each others rights because to defend the rights of others is to defend your own. Religion plays no role in this except to encourage people to judge one another which is not quite what I would consider to be respectful in most cases.

Just like calling someone here on/. "Anonymous Coward" is a sign in itself of the general view on anonymous people which is quite immature, and ready for a change into something more neutral like "Anonymous".

My real name is not ultranova. Yes, shocking I know. But really, my real name is not ultranova. It's just an online pseudonym I use here, which lets me create a narrative about my posts here, and lets other people judge that narrative as they will. And it also allows me to see how that reaction is going, and should it turn unanomously negative - should I be modded down constantly - I could perhaps analyze the criticism and see if it has a point.

So no, the thing about "Anonymous Coward" is not that anonymity is bad in the sense that you all should know my real name, no, it's about establishing an indentity within this forum and using that to have a debate. The day might come that ultranova disappears to the annals of history, but I, the real human being behind it, will still be here. And I'll remember all the criticism ultranova encountered, whether I agree with it or not. Contrast this with the Anonymous Coward, who can't learn for the simple reason that he can't easily track answers to himself.

Anonymity is good, but pseudonymity is even better, at least as far as the purposes of Slashdot and public debate in general go.